St. John’s United Methodist Church

      Mark and Tibby painting baseboard and window trim.  Look who’s sitting down!

         Logan and Aaron brought the arduous task of removing the old laminate to completion, and then cleaned up and began installing the floating laminate!  Go Guys!!

   This is the Arabi team with our site supervisor, Phoenix, and one of our Americorp volunteers, Steve.  We gave each of them one of our team t-shirts

   Tim and RJ are working on some of the baseboard installation.

  The Meraux site supervisor, Kim, is giving Mike some direction.  Don’t ya think he needs it?

      Sam and Jake were victorious in taming a door installation — no easy task!

   Keith found

  Due to computer operators limitations, you must turn your head sideways to see Cheri hard at work caulking doorframes.  Sorry!

   Break time in Meraux!

      At the end of the day, the Meraux workers visited the “Snow Ball” (sort of a slush puppy, but with a gazillion flavors) stand — just across the street from the house we are working on.  And it seems it’s not the first visit to the stand!!

      A ship leaving port, sailing down the Mississippi — very close to the church where we are staying.  Some of us made a trip to walk along the berm that keeps the Mississippi from flooding us out

The third day has brought new difinition to tired!  It seems that something more important happened in the life of The Church on “the third day” — but that’s for another day, and another blog.

Beautiful weather has prevailed for most of our trip.  On the night we arrived, there was a pretty significant rain storm, but since then it’s been wonderful.  Today is was sunny, and in the high seventies, with low humidity — great working conditions.

The crew at the St. Bernard Project house in Arabi has made good progress:  completed the removal of the old glued-directly-to-the-floor laminate in the master bedroom (Praise God! — five people worked over two and a half days!!); finished the laminate in the rest of the house; primed the baseboard and window trim; began hanging doors; and began caulking around windows.  At the Barlow home in Meraux (We have been telling you previously that it was in Violet.  Oops!) the team has finished more trim, molding an construction of wondow frames; did lots of painting trim and finish coats; caulking around the moulding and nail-holes; installed baseboard and doorlocks; and hung more doors.  Whew!!

Part of our team met an interesting young man today.  He comes from the Boston, MA area.  After high school he worked for a year in Louisiana, helping the rebuilding process.  Then a year later he went back up north and began college at Dartmouth.  Feeling drawn back to New Orleans, he transferred to Tulane.  He continues to volunteer for the St. Bernard Project — measuring for and designing the kitchen layout in all the homes they rebuild.  In addition to school and volunteering for the SBP, he is taking classes to become an EMT — with plans to go on to become a Paramedic, and possibly a Physician’s Assistant.  This is an impressive young man.

Tibby shared how devastating it has been to see all of the conditions for the first time.  But it’s equalling — or perhaps MORE impressive to see the volunteerism that has taken place.  He is also impressed with the friendliness of the people here.  Tibby went to Home Depot to get something this morning.  When the fellow who was waiting on him found out that he also worked for Home Depot, the fellow asked Tibby what he was doing “down here.”  When Tibby told him, he was very quick to say thank you.  And this was even though Tibby wasnt helping this gentleman personally. 

As Jim Avrett was flying to New Orleans last Sunday, he spoke briefly to the woman sitting next to him about his reason for going to NO.  That conversation was fine, but as the people began to de-plane, another passenger who had been sitting nearby tugged on Jim’s shirtsleeve and said that he had overheard the conversation.  That passenger said “I just want to thank you.”

The people here are deeply grateful for the assistance that has come from near and far.  And they are very free to express that thanks. 

This evening was a “free evening” for the team — a time to take it easy.  The host church is having a Youth Event which some of our kids will be attending as well.  Most of us are making phonecalls home, or reading, or sharing conversations and fellowship. 

We have one more day of work (Friday is a holiday in Louisiana, and St. Bernard Project is “closed”).  On Friday the team will attend the Jazz Festival in New Orleans, and return early to our host church, where we will share a crawfish boil — the traditional Friday night dinner at the “Reaching Out in Love Center.”  Pastor Mark is heartbroken that he won’t be able to take part in this event (not!) – he will be flying home on Friday morning, to prepare for a wedding on Saturday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 8:38 pm and is filed under All Posts, foradults, outreach, witness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.